CHAPTER VII

THE ROSES OF M. MARMONTEL

Luc stood again on the bridge, leaning on the parapet, and watching the river and the people passing to and fro.

It was midsummer of the year ’46, and unusually hot. Most of the women wore roses—red, white, and pink. There were many boats on the river, and an air of gay carelessness over Paris; yet the war had not been so brilliantly successful of late. The English mastery of the seas was ruining commerce, and the Saxon troops were marching on Provence. The taxes were heavier than ever, and starved faces and bitter tongues more frequent in the poorer quarters where Luc lived.

If anyone had remarked a slim young noble, richly dressed, looking with earnest eyes at the river from this old bridge of St. Germain some three years ago, and had happened to pass this spot now, they would not have recognized that graceful figure in the prematurely aged man in the shabby clothes who leant heavily against the parapet, whose face was so disfigured and expressionless, who wore no sword, but helped himself with a black cane.

But Luc de Clapiers was happier than he had been when last he mused above the Seine. As his body fell into decay and painful feebleness his spirit seemed to mount more and more triumphantly. Sometimes he felt as if he held all the thought of all the world in the hollow of his hand; as if he soared above and beyond his age with the great immortals who rule over eternity. In his dreams he beheld most beautiful landscapes; when he lay down on his bed vistas opened up of strange and gorgeous countries, exquisite almost beyond bearing, and a path would run from the bare boards of his garret straight to the heart of some woodland that dipped to uncharted seas of delight.

Music came from a boat that passed beneath the bridge; the sound of it across the water was tremblingly sweet to Luc’s ears. He thought there was something sublime and sad in the notes; that there was a message in them that no human voice could convey.

He straightened himself against the parapet, then went on his way. At the corner of the bridge he met a beggar woman dragging a child. She cast an appealing glance at Luc, who paused, fumbled a silver coin from his pocket, and gave it her. The action reminded him that he had only a few gold pieces left in the world. He had planned his resources to last twice as long, but it had been easy to deny himself everything but charity. That it was not in his nature to forgo, nor were the instincts of a life at a moment to be altered. He never chaffered, and therefore paid double what every one else did in the Isle.

Last winter the man who lived in the room opposite his, a clarionet player at the Opera, had been ill, and Luc had paid to prevent the fellow being turned into the street, paid the expenses of his short illness, and finally his humble funeral.

For his book he had received nothing. For the next edition that he was revising, with the advice of M. de Voltaire, he also expected to receive nothing. He had friends,—Voltaire himself, Saint Vincent, and others,—but the noble blood in him prevented him from ever considering their possible assistance. He could only think of writing pamphlets, or doing translations; but he knew little Greek or Latin, and only a scanty Italian.

As he returned home through the sunny streets he recalled his father’s words: “Not a louis from me, if you are starving—as, in your folly and wickedness, you will starve.”

He thought of his parents, of Joseph, and Aix, with great tenderness. He was glad he had resisted the bookseller’s entreaty to put his name to his book, even though by his refusal he had probably lost a good chance of ensuring the success of his labour; for he had spared the proud old aristocrat the shame of seeing his name on the title-page of a work of philosophy; of hearing his name associated with Voltaire, with literature, with poverty, with the ignominy of writing and printing a book.

“He would say,” thought Luc, “how right he was—what an utter failure I am.”

He opened the door of his room, and entered with great weariness. The stairs, steep and dark, fatigued him immensely. The garret, being directly under the roof, was suffocatingly hot. He felt his head ache and his limbs tremble. The food placed for him on the table near the window he turned from, though the little girl who waited on him had arranged glass and plate, salad and meat, black bread, and thin wine in a tall bottle, neatly enough.

On this same table lay a bundle of proofs tried round with a twist of twine.

Luc took them up, balanced them in his hand, and put them down again. He was only able to read them with great difficulty.

“After all,” he mused, with a melancholy smile, “perhaps they are worth nothing—who knows?”

He sat very still, considering what he was to do for money. The people he was dealing with were poor. He could not bear the thought of being in their debt, or of asking them for any kindness that he could not reward. He reflected that it cost something even to die decently, and he might live some time longer. He smiled to think that he was balancing the probable length of his life against the probable length of his purse, and at the reflection that a hundred pistoles would put him out of all anxiety. His sweet humour took the whole thing with a laugh.

Presently he went to the window. A foul, stale smell was rising from the old winding street. Dirty, sharp-faced children played in the brilliant patch of sunshine that fell between two decayed houses and stained the cobbles.

At the doorless entrances dishevelled women stood talking, and gathered round the wine-shop were a few men of a better sort, with their shirts open for the heat, who emptied their glasses silently, then went about their business, silently also. Luc’s feeble sight could make out none of this, nor did he look down, but across the irregular roofs to the ineffable glory of the gold and purple August sky.

He put his hands on the sill; the stinging heat of it was grateful to his chill blood. He closed his eyes, and felt the sunshine like a red sword across his lids. He leant his sick head against the mullions. The clock of a church near by struck four; it reminded him that this was the hour and the day when he was generally visited by Voltaire or one of his friends—Diderot, d’Alembert, Saint Vincent. Luc loved these men, as he could not fail to love those whose warm regard was sweetening his closing years, but he would not live their lives. The Pompadour was their patroness, and they lived on that corruption that they secretly laughed at. Luc could not ever have brought himself to kneel at the footstool of the Marquise; his pure integrity, his absolute independence, and his complete obscurity divided him as sharply as his birth from the group of brilliant men to whom by right of genius he belonged.

All of these men had achieved success; combined, they made a power equal to that of the ancient royalty itself. They were preparing—in the Encyclopædia to which they were devoting their enthusiasm, their gifts of logic, of reason, of sarcasm, of eloquence—thunderbolts that would shake God Himself. Yet they one and all agreed to honour the unknown young aristocrat whose austere philosophy condemned half their actions, but whose sweetness and heroism won their admiration and respect.

M. de Voltaire came to Luc’s chamber this blazing afternoon, and not alone. He brought with him a young man, very splendidly attired, with a fine ardent face and bold eyes, full of an eager, joyous life. M. de Voltaire presented him briefly—

“M. le Marquis—M. Marmontel.”

Luc caught the young man’s hand, and drew him gently into the sunlight, straining his half-blind eyes to make out the person of his visitor.

For Jean François Marmontel was the favourite of Paris, petted, caressed, extolled; the incarnation of success; one young, vigorous, and in the seat of glory; one physically what Luc had been before the Bohemia war, and from the worldly point of view in that position Luc had so yearned and longed for, so confidently hoped to attain.

Luc had failed in arms, in politics, in letters. He had lost love, and health, and all hope of material triumph. He had even won hate from those nearest to him in blood. He was dying, slowly, and in a fashion humiliating. He was disfigured, feeble, half blind, bowed with weakness and great pain.

M. de Voltaire thought of this as he watched him looking so earnestly at the young man who was so crowned with gifts, with success, strength, and vigour.

M. Marmontel wore roses like the women who had passed to and fro the Pont St. Germain—sweet-smelling red roses, thrust into the black velvet ribbon that fastened the long lace ends of his cravat. His bright, sparkling brown hair was tied with a blue velvet knot; his white waistcoat was flourished with wreaths of flowers in many colours; his face was slightly flushed under the eyes that were fixed on the man before him, with a look of mingled humility, apprehension, and self-confidence, only to be seen in the faces of the very youthful and very happy.

Luc, with painful, laboured searching, made out these details. His grasp tightened on the straight young fingers.

“I congratulate M. Marmontel from the depths of my heart,” he said. And his voice was so soft, so sweet, so sincere that the man to whom he spoke gave a slight start. He was expecting another voice from this frail, ill creature.

“What does it feel like,” continued Luc, in the same warm tones, “to be young and famous? To have achieved so soon?”

“Monseigneur, you overwhelm me,” answered the young author frankly.

Luc smiled. His scarred face—the delicate traits of which had been so for ever ruined—changed with this smile in such a fashion—inexpressible, but not to be ignored—that M. Marmontel, with a sense of shock, knew he was in the presence of something very rare and beautiful, and his own achievement seemed a crude thing.

“I have done nothing,” he said. “I hope some day—but at present—nothing, Monsieur.”

He lowered his eyes, confused.

The low, sweet, aristocrat’s voice answered—

“You must not undervalue yourself, nor your great rewards. I am grateful you found time to come here.” He gave a little gesture round the miserable room, a gesture that was the man of quality’s dismissal of his surroundings. And indeed M. Marmontel, though used to the most splendid hotels of Paris, had forgotten the garret from the moment Luc had spoken.

M. de Voltaire began to talk: of the great world; of the world of letters; of the world beyond Paris, beyond France; of the future, and the great changes that were coming with a swiftness almost terrible. But for once Luc was not listening to the speech of M. de Voltaire; he was looking tenderly, lovingly, at the favourite of fortune, the man in the flush of his youth and fame, the man who had won glory at the first effort.

He thought of d’Espagnac and de Seytres—of how beautiful and ardent they had been, and how forgotten they were in their foreign graves—and his soul rushed back to his own early youth and his opening dreams. This man had realized his—this man had everything gorgeous in the world before him; he was modest and fine, but his extraordinary sense of triumph was betrayed in his clear laugh. He laughed often at M. de Voltaire’s remarks. No shade of envy or even of regret touched Luc. He did not think of himself at all; only he felt a little wonder at the thought of the two young officers whom he had so loved.

“Surely they too were worthy to be crowned,” he thought wistfully. And his heart swelled as he recalled Hippolyte dying in the hospital, and Georges in the snow.

When the two rose to take their leave, Luc, after his farewells to M. de Voltaire, laid a wasted hand on the younger man’s soft satin sleeve.

“Monsieur,” he said, with his unconquerable air of the great gentleman, “I have not held any roses in my hand since I came to Paris—seeing yours reminded me. Might I ask them of you—to remember you by, when you are gone?”

M. Marmontel unfastened the red blooms without a word, and held them out.

“Thank you,” smiled Luc. “You have honoured me. I give you all my good wishes—that your genius may make you happy as it has made you great.”

The young man did not answer. He seemed abashed.

When they had gone, Luc went to the table and put the flowers beside the proofs of his book.

The sun was near the setting, but the room was still brilliant with ruddy light.

Luc stood quite still, his hands resting on the edge of the table. He closed his eyes and bent his head.

“Is there no charm to bring any of you back?” he asked, in a low voice. “For a moment? You know now. Come back to me, dear. There is nothing in the way now, nothing. You know I am lonely, do you not?”

He swayed a little against the table, and set his teeth.

“Come back; come—back.”

He sank on his knees, and rested his face against the wand-bottomed chair.

“I love you—is it not strong enough? Come—back.”

For a while he shivered in the summer silence of the dying afternoon, and his blood ran passionately in his tired body.

Then he lifted his swimming head, and fumbled for the roses that had been worn by the man who was happy, and loved, and young, and famous,—the man who had everything he had hoped to have, and was everything that he had hoped to be,—and he laid the petals to his lips, and presently wept into their hearts, because he too was young, and some things that were dead could not be forgotten, and some hopes that were unfulfilled and some desires that were unsatisfied could not be for ever silenced.

CHAPTER VIII

THE END OF THE QUEST

On a pale, bitter day in the following spring, Luc de Clapiers made his way with a steady, purposeful slowness to a certain house in the Isle where there was a garden. It was the hotel of some nobleman, neglected and shut up. The garden was neglected too, but there was grass in it, green now, and two trees, just beginning to be flushed with leaves that crossed their boughs before the shuttered windows and closed doors.

In the centre of this garden was a fountain, broken and dried up. The basin was grey with dead moss, and in the centre rose a defaced figure with a pitying face and a bare bosom girdled beneath with drapery, in the folds of which the little birds nested.

Luc, when he reached this spot, leant against the high rusty iron railings, and stared at the grass and the two trees.

He was fatigued and hungry. A week ago his recent means of support had been taken from him. During the winter he had earned his living as a bookseller’s hack, by writing prefaces, by indexing, by correcting proofs, even by copying letters and delivering books. The work threatened him with utter blindness. He began to make many mistakes. At last another man was put in his place, and Luc was at a loss indeed.

He had some time since taken a cheaper room, and he had sold everything he could sell.

Yesterday, to pay the debt he owed for his poor lodging, he had parted with what he would not have sold for bread—what he had hoarded jealously so long—his sword: the sword his father had given him before he went to the war; a beautiful weapon of Toledo steel, with shell and quillons inlaid with gold.

Half the price of it lay in Luc’s pocket, and this money caused him the first sensation of shame he had known in his life. He held on to the railings to steady himself, and looked at the peaceful enclosure of the ruined garden.

His great dread was that he might live long enough to become an object of M. de Voltaire’s charity. He had winced from nothing yet, but he did wince from that.

The second version of his book had been for long refused on account of the ill success of the first. After many endeavours, a bookseller had been at last persuaded to take it; but there remained a good deal to be done before the sheets were ready for the press, and Luc was too ill to write.

“I must finish that,” he kept saying to himself. “I must finish that.”

The fresh bare boughs, through which two little birds were flying, the long blades of grass moving slightly to and fro in the wind, even the noble lines of the empty house and the calm face of the broken statue, soothed Luc.

“Why should I trouble about any of it?” he asked himself. “Once I am dead, I shall so soon forget it all.”

He returned to the squalid little street, the miserable house where he lodged, and climbed to his room, which was dark and scarcely furnished at all. The narrow window looked blankly on the house opposite. There was no view, even over roofs, and the sun only entered for a brief while at early dawn.

Luc, coughing painfully, latched the door, and feebly made his way to the table that stood beside the mattress on which he slept. He put his hand in his pocket, took out the money, and laid it, a little pile of silver pieces, on the table.

“Should I die to-night, I suppose that would be enough to bury me,” he said to himself, with a little smile.

A cry filled the room as water fills a glass into which it is flung suddenly—rang round and round walls and ceiling—

“Luc! Luc! Luc!”

The Marquis turned in slow bewilderment; he dimly saw the figure of a man advancing from the window.

“I have been waiting for you,” said this person, in a terribly moved voice.

“Who are you?” asked Luc. He knew nothing, save that this was not one of his friends.

“Who am I? Do you not know me?”

“No—yet——”

“Can you not see me?”

“I can see very little—hardly at all. I know your voice.”

“I am Joseph de Clapiers.”

Luc made a step backward. His face, that had seemed utterly bloodless, was suddenly stained with a great flush of colour.

“I am sorry you have come,” he said. His thought was that it would have been better, far better, if he could have died before any of his family, or indeed anyone connected with his old life, had seen him in what must to them be degradation unspeakable.

“How did you find me?” he asked. He endeavoured, with the rising yearning of old affection, to make out his brother’s face, but Joseph stood too far from him. To Luc he was featureless.

“Some one I know heard a man called Marmontel speak of you. I traced you through that. They told me here that this was your room, and I waited for you.” He spoke in a controlled, though harsh and strained voice. After that first fierce cry he had gained command of himself.

“I am sorry you came,” repeated Luc, with quiet sweetness. “We had no farewell in Aix, but you would have kept a more pleasant memory of me if you had not come. Will you not sit down?” he added. He himself sank into the rough wood chair by the table; indeed, his limbs were shaking so that he could not stand.

Joseph came near enough for Luc to see his fresh comeliness; near enough for them to touch each other, and for the elder to divine the wrath and horror in the face of the younger. He suddenly saw himself as if a mirror hung before him, and the blood again swept his face.

“Why did you come?” he asked under his breath.

Joseph stared at him cruelly. Luc no longer bore any sign or mark of a gentleman. He wore a clumsy grey coat, worn, and a little frayed at the cuffs; his waistcoat, which was of a dingy yellow colour, was stained with ink; his neckcloth was coarse, though newly washed and folded neatly; his stockings were thick and woollen, his shoes heavy. He wore no wig, and his hair was long again, and tied with a black ribbon, but colourless and grey about the front, as if it had been powdered. Joseph marked the absence of sword, watch, and ring. He did not mark the fine freshness of the rough attire, nor reflect on the effort this decent cleanliness meant to the man who lived alone, half blind, and in such poverty.

“My father!” he murmured. “My father!”

“Did he send you?” asked Luc.

“No.”

“Has he ever spoken of me?”

“No.”

“Nor my mother?”

“No.”

“You—think they are right?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you here?” asked Luc patiently.

“Because,” was the fierce answer, “I cannot endure a de Clapiers to die in a hospital, and be buried at the expense of public charity.”

The elder brother lifted his ruined face and smiled.

“What do you want of me?” he asked.

“You must come to my hotel——”

Luc interrupted.

“You cannot coax back when dying the man you have cast out,” he said gently. “Nor would it soothe your pride if he should expire on your hearth. You think I am disgraced, accursed. You perhaps even hate me.”

“I think I do,” breathed Joseph heavily.

Luc rose.

“Then leave me. I have so little time left for anything; none at all for hate. I want to die alone. Go your way, Joseph. When I left Aix something broke that is past mending.”

“I think the Devil possesses you,” cried Joseph. “But you are Luc de Clapiers, and you shall not live in beggary among the scum of Paris.”

“I am Luc de Clapiers,” replied the Marquis—“remember it. I am not what I look, but what I was born: a gentleman of quality, who upholds his own honour—as well here as in Aix, as well here as in Bohemia. Be content; I shall not disgrace you.”

Joseph half laughed.

“Disgrace! I think you deny God?”

“And the Devil—and all you believe, perhaps, Joseph,”—his voice had an exalted yet tender note,—“but maybe I shall sleep well just the same in my unconsecrated grave.”

The younger man stepped back, clenched his strong right hand, and struck his breast.

“For the honour of our nobility, for the respect you once bore our mother, in the name of the God you outrage, I conjure you come with me. Let a priest shrive you——”

Luc broke in with a sudden flash of vitality.

“Do you think I am going to be false to all I believe—now? Now, ”—he dropped into his chair again; his strength was slipping from him, but he beat the words out with a great labour of his breath, —“now—when—I have—so nearly won?”

“You! You who have failed in everything you have undertaken!”

Luc put a thin, trembling hand on the book—a small humble volume—and the loose sheets of paper lying on the table.

“I have administered to the truth within me,” he said, and, still keeping his hand on the book, he forced himself to raise his head, that had sunk, through sheer bodily weakness, into his bosom, until he looked his brother in the face.

“You have dishonoured a noble house,” said Joseph hoarsely; “and I shall never forgive you, dead or living.”

“Ah!” answered Luc softly, regretfully. “The pity of such words as those!” His head drooped a little again. “The pity,” he added wistfully, “of all our fierce passions, our curses, our hatreds, our wrongs to one another, when there is so little any of us can do, and so little time to do it in. And we waste our few chances. Do not hate me—Joseph. I shall always love you.”

The younger brother was silent. It might be his heart prompted him to forgive; that old affection stirred. But the wrong against his religion, his pride, his order was too strong; the offences he raged against were unforgivable; the wrath, the disgust, the shame he had nourished in his heart since Luc’s departure from Aix were rather fanned than mollified by the sight of the dying man who had aroused these emotions.

Luc took advantage of his silence to speak again.

“Since you have come, Joseph,” he said, “let us part in friendship. We are the two last of our family, and—after all—that is something.”

“Will you leave this?” demanded the younger man, not kindly, but with a suppressed violence. “Will you come with me?”

“No,” replied Luc. “This is my place now. And it is easier for me to refuse you, Joseph, because I know that pride, not love, asks this.”

“Pride!” echoed Joseph. “You have the damnable pride of the Devil. You prefer your garret—your accursed book”—he snatched the thin volume from under Luc’s frail fingers, and cast it on the ground—“your outcast friends—to your family, your honour, your home.”

The Marquis made a faint gesture of sorrow and protest. “This is not needful,” he murmured. But Joseph’s vigorous voice overbore his feeble tones.

“Very well, then,” he continued; “die in the miserable loft your dishonourable conduct has brought you to, and leave us to endure your disgrace—as we have endured it since you left Aix!”

Luc got to his feet again, and stood holding on to the edge of the table.

“You will be able to blot me from your annals very completely soon,” he said. “When I am dead, no one will speak of me, and you can forget.”

He lifted his hand and let it fall. The little pile of silver pieces was knocked over by the gesture, and the money rolled across the floor to the feet of the younger brother.

“Is this Voltaire’s charity?” he cried.

Luc lifted his head, and smiled.

“No. I sold my sword this morning. So you see I can pay for my own coffin, Joseph.”

He sat down again and hid his face in his two hands, as if he was greatly fatigued, and wished to compose his thoughts. There was a dignity about this movement and pose, as if he had withdrawn himself into final silence. Joseph had no more weapons; his wrath flared impotently. He stared fiercely at his brother, and set his scarlet heel on the book he had flung on the floor; then, in white haughtiness and bitter speechlessness, left the garret.

“I am tired,” said Luc to himself; “tired—tired.”

He dropped his hands, and rose and looked round for the crushed volume Joseph had spurned with his foot. As he stooped to pick it up he heard a soft yet swelling crash of music.

“Soldiers,” he murmured, “going to the—war.”

The music gathered in strength until it culminated in an almost intolerable crescendo of passionate exaltation. It seemed to be very near, almost in the room. Luc found himself on his knees, quivering in the sound of it. The music began to paint pictures in the garret, and Luc’s blindness did not prevent his seeing them: gorgeous banners draped the bare rafters, and a procession with flags, shields, and drums crossed the humble floor, and broke away the mean walls, and let in the great clouds and the strong sunbeams, and showed a vast span of pure light that dazzled into the infinite distance.

A company with sublime tread was passing over this bridge, and they smiled at Luc.

He felt the clouds closing round him and the light enveloping him. One of the martial figures was a woman who looked at him with royal eyes.

Luc rose. He felt himself straight and strong. He held out his arms towards the rolling golden clouds that entered through the broken walls, towards the procession that crossed the arc of light.

“O God of mine, whom I have laboured not to offend, take me back whence I came!” he cried.

As he spoke, he felt himself drawn into the company with the flags and swords, and with immortal light on his face he set his foot on the end of the dazzling arc.

---

M. de Voltaire, that evening, found him lying across the floor, with his head on his book, his right hand where his sword should have been, and the silver pieces scattered about him sparkling in the cold spring moonlight that fell through the high, open garret window.

EPILOGUE

A girl in a straight white muslin gown, and a cap with green ribbons, was seated on the brim of a fountain in the garden of a house in Aix, listening dutifully to an old man, who, with the self-absorption of extreme age, was talking of the past in a low, slightly fretful voice. Clémence de Fortia disguised a wandering attention. She had a letter in the bosom of her gown that she wished to read and re-read in private—a letter from a young deputy in Paris, full of the wonders, the scandals, the terrors of these last years of the century and first years of the French Republic.

It was midsummer, and the garden was knee-deep in flowers, all coloured by the sun and shaken by the warm breeze. The old man sat on a wicker chair under the tree that shaded the fountain with a rug about his knees. He must have been over eighty years of age, and he was dressed in the fashion of that period that was now completely over, and in the style of that aristocracy that had lately fallen, terribly and for ever.

“Your grandmother was betrothed to my elder brother once, Mademoiselle Clémence,” he said, taking up his broken talk after a pause.

“Why, I did not know that you ever had a brother, Monsieur,” she answered, interested.

A look of distress and regret passed over the fine old face.

“He died fifty years ago,” he murmured, “in Paris—in the arms of M. de Voltaire. Fifty years! I have lived too long.”

“Ah, no!” smiled the young girl brightly. “The times have been very terrible, but I cannot help thinking that all is very new and glorious now.”

“Your grandmother would never have said that.” The old Marquis de Vauvenargues fixed her with sad eyes. “But you are a child of your generation, despite the blood in your veins.”

“Things have changed so!” she said, humouring him.

“Ah, yes!—things have changed!” he repeated. And his chin sank on the lace ruffles on his breast. “I meant that when I said I had lived too long. I should have wished to die before I saw the things I have seen in France.”

Clémence de Fortia laid her warm pink fingers over his dry white hands.

“I know,” she said. “But here we escaped the worst; and—somehow——” She paused; she was thinking of the letter near her heart. What did changing dynasties matter after all, was her reflection, when the essential things were the same? Aloud she finished her sentence with a smile: “It is so pleasant in the garden, Monsieur, that I cannot help being happy!”

The old man smiled also, but his eyes were dim with memories.

“Here is my father!” cried Mademoiselle de Fortia, springing to her feet. “And you will want to talk to him!”

She ran across the sunny grass to meet a man of middle age, dressed in the fashion of the Revolution.

“M. de Vauvenargues is sad to-day,” she whispered. “I tried to comfort him, but he is so very, very old. And I have heard from Paris.” She blushed defiantly.

“What do they say in Paris?” asked the Marquis de Fortia.

“They say General Bonaparte is going to marry Madame de Beauharnais. But she is not young, and he is quite well thought of, is he not?”

“I will relieve you of your post,” smiled her father. “Go and read your gossip, child.”

She laughed, and ran away into the rose garden with her hands at her bosom.

M. de Fortia went to the old man, who was staring before him at the water that dripped by the river deity into the basin of the fountain from the mouth of the urn. He looked up as his friend approached, and said abruptly, in his high voice—

“Do you think Voltaire, a great man?”

“Certainly—one of the greatest.”

“He thought my brother had genius.”

“Your brother?”

“My elder brother——” He paused, seemed to make an effort of memory. “Luc—yes, his name was Luc I have not spoken that name for half a hundred years. Luc—I believe we were fond of each other. He used to—write.”

He nodded at the fountain.

“Well, I have his manuscripts and his book upstairs. I thought of them last night. I am an old man, and the last of a family that has been very proud, as you know, my friend, very proud.”

He paused again.

“But perhaps, when I am dead, our name will not suffer—in these days—when things are so different, and who is to remember us?” His voice sank, and an expression of profound melancholy clouded his face.

“What do you wish me to do?” asked M. de Fortia, bending over him.

The last of the de Clapiers drew a key from his pocket, and presented it with a trembling hand.

“You will find the box in my desk. When I am dead, publish my brothers writings—with his name. We used to think he had disgraced our blazon; but now—perhaps—his book might even keep alive—in the new era coming—the noble name”—pride lit the dim eyes—“of Vauvenargues.”

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